Work Text:
She walks to school with the lunch she packed
Nobody knows what she's holdin' back
She can feel several stares on her back as she enters the doors to school and ignores mostly everyone to go to her locker and take out her books for the day, hiding her lunch underneath others so it doesn’t get stolen.
Wearin' the same dress she wore yesterday
She hides the bruises with linen and lace, oh
Usually, she would put her jacket over it and catch up to El who is standing expectantly at the door to their classroom, but today she wraps it tightly around herself as she walks the short distance towards her, hoping she doesn’t notice that today’s outfit is literally the same she wore yesterday.
It wasn’t her favourite dress, she had prettier stuff of course that wasn’t so tacky and “little girl” ish plus she’d rather be wearing jeans, but it hid the marks Neil left on her last night from when he beat her up due to Billy not being home and she had no clean clothes, so it works.
The teacher wonders but she doesn't ask
It's hard to see the pain behind the mask
Her Homeroom teacher notices, however, given her eyes trace Maxine’s head all the way to her toes in almost disapproval, but there’s a hesitancy and questioning behind her eyes that makes Max’s chest feel like it’s about to cave in before her eyes are drawn elsewhere in the room and it thankfully subsides so she can move again and not feel frozen to the ground.
Bearing the burden of a secret storm
Sometimes she wishes she was never born
Sitting in her seat is agony and she muffles her groans as she tries to get to work and not be distracted, even if El can see she’s off and tries her best to cheer her up, even just a little.
It’s so kind of her, but she knows that despite El’s gift of literally being a ball of sunshine mixed with a raging hurricane when she wants to be, she can’t fix everything.
Especially her.
Through the wind and the rain
She stands hard as a stone
No one can /actually/ fix her, she knows that. Not unless some miracle happens. She thinks of her Dad often, given he’s back home, in her real home of California. How he’s feeling right now. Sure, he’s only able to call once a week and all that, but she wishes she could find it in herself to speak up to him. Brace for the hit, the clamping of hands over her mouth as Neil struggles to shut her up and she screams for him to help her. It’s a fleeting dream that leaves her mind as soon as the bell rings and she’s off again.
In her world that she can rise above
But her dreams give her wings
Over the day, she runs into the gang, given El can’t keep her hands off Mike for two seconds and everyone’s allowed to tease them about it and it’s here that she feels safe for once, just enjoying /being/ with people that aren’t constantly on the verge of hurting her somehow.
And she flies to a place where she's loved
Concrete angel
It ends all too soon though. Days, they always end and she hates it. She doesn’t care about the day. She could do nothing in the day and still be satisfied as she’s away from the house, from her family, free to run around like she’s a 5-year-old without many consequences.
It’s sunset that makes the fear seep into her, the bright streaks of fading colour across the sky that tells her she has to go home for dinner, so she can have some more than anything, but also so Neil doesn’t lock her out like he does Billy or comes searching. Anything but.
Somebody cries in the middle of the night
The neighbours hear, but they turn out the lights
It doesn’t matter, however, in the long run. Dinner’s a tense affair, Billy’s seat consistently empty once again while her stepfather and mother eat around her. Neil’s shoulders are hard set and her mother continuously looks between them both, the fear behind her eyes telling Max everything she needed to know.
Unfortunately, she’s not fast enough to get out of the room after they clean up the table and Neil’s voice stabs into her head, fast to the point. “Maxine, can you come downstairs with me for a moment, please doll?”
A fragile soul caught in the hands of fate
When morning comes it'll be too late
On the outside, she reacts only sightly, inside she’s shaking. The phrase “come downstairs” is used on Billy a lot and he usually comes back with more bruises than he left with. She doesn’t want to follow him, almost thinks about taking off into her room or making an excuse like she has homework or something, but she doubts they’ll work this time.
Spoiler alert: They don’t and just before she blacks out, her head and body aching and throat raw from screaming, she hopes that somehow, someone, maybe even Billy, heard her.
Through the wind and the rain
She stands hard as a stone
She doesn't know what happens after that. The whole world is just light, sound and colours. Nothing tangible. Nothing to grasp onto. The pain is gone thankfully, but everything feels weird, like she’s trying to somehow reform herself and can’t quite get the hang of it.
In her world that she can rise above
But her dreams give her wings
Meanwhile, there are sirens, cop cars and nosy neighbours crowding a small house on a street, watching with gasps of horror as a bloodied man is led outside yelling at his lungs, a woman behind him in hysterics as she shrieks into the night, broken and animal-like.
And she flies to a place where she's loved
Concrete angel
It’s all too soon before there’s another breath and a stretcher is carted out, a pale young looking hand covered in blackened bruises slipping from under its cover to hang, limp and lifeless as the body attached to it while it’s loaded into the back of an ambulance.
A statue stands in a shaded place
An angel girl with an upturned face
She wakes finally, after the colours and noise fade and finds herself on a beach, her head lovingly being stroked, fingers in her long red hair. Almost as red as her blood that she’d felt seeping out of her on the floor of the patio earlier.
Looking up as she adjusts her eyes to the sunlight, she sees a beautiful blonde-haired woman and instantly recognises her as Billy’s mother from the old photos Neil kept around, hidden out of sight from her mom because he could and finds it in her to smile at her.
She just laughs and smiles back at her. “Welcome, sweet Maxine.”
A name is written on a polished rock
A broken heart that the world forgot
Somewhere else, however, a small group of teenagers and 2 larger ones, all looking equally dishevelled, but decent enough, stand next to a tree where a statue sits.
It’s only up to the knee height on the adults, but its purpose stands out as much as a splinter in someone’s hand given it is carved in the face of a cherub, its stone face resting on its hands as its vacant eyes look up to the sky, the words “Maxine Mayfield, 1971 - 1985, Our Hearts Are Forever Broken” chiselled onto a little golden plaque that sits at the angel’s feet, practically kissing them as it shines in the kaleidoscopic sunlight through the tree.
Through the wind and the rain
She stands hard as a stone
El sobs as she puts flowers down, Mike by her side and holding into her as tightly as he can while Lucas and Dustin grip onto eachother. Nearby, Steve is watching a clearly inebriated Billy whose knuckles are white as he seemingly fights not to show the same emotions or worse, lose it and start yelling and screaming or that is probably what he expects.
In her world that she can rise above
But her dreams give her wings
He doesn’t know that inside Billy’s head, all he can think is how he just wants to punch that stupid marker now, maybe even that tree hanging over Max’s body. Destroy it all and burn it to the ground, so he can pretend this isn’t happening.
Billy may not have cared for Maxine all that much, but in a small way, he did or really, had and now, he’d lost another person who he started to care for. He had little knowledge that he’d see her again sooner than he would have liked.
And she flies to a place where she's loved
Concrete angel
It’s only mere months before Billy is bloodied and dying like Max had been once, on the ground of the Starcourt Mall, whispering “I’m sorry…” to a dead and starless sky before his whole world fades into the same haze of sound and colours.
Eventually, he too, wakes in his mother’s arms on the beach - a feat never thought possible and more emotional than he’d ever let himself feel while living, but it’s a punch to the gut when he gets over that hurdle to see Max there, not looking like that girl from the one horror movie he watched like 3 years ago and rolled his eyes at.
He almost cries when he manages to scramble to his feet and she runs to him, embracing him like he never did to her when he was younger and just held him, both of them holding eachother before there are new gentle hands as Billy’s mom holds them as well after a while.
It’s nice, it’s safe and it’s loving. All Max wanted to be, all her life, was to be loved. Loved by Billy and Neil and Lucas and her friends. Now, despite everything, she was finally what she wanted all along. Happy, safe and loved, like she deserved to be.